


Mortal Truth; and You Wish You Didn't Ask the Question

by wmblake



Category: Marvel, Marvel Cinematic Universe
Genre: Angst, Gen, Hurt, Whumptober, there's no comfort in this only pain
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-10-13
Updated: 2019-10-13
Packaged: 2020-12-14 06:24:11
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,571
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21011219
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/wmblake/pseuds/wmblake
Summary: In the aftermath of a bad accident, Harley has an arc reactor installed. He insists on becoming a superhero. He always wanted to be just like Tony.





	Mortal Truth; and You Wish You Didn't Ask the Question

**Author's Note:**

> Inspired by: https://parallelparkner.tumblr.com/post/188258200989

A dull ache thudded through Harley’s chest. Head woozy, vision swimming even with his eyes closed, just imagined colors and shapes swirling in the dark, he groaned.

Something squeezed around his hand. “Kid?” The voice was rough, hoarse, thick—Harley scrambled after a flicker of recognition. “Harley?”

He forced his eyes open, no matter the heaviness of his eyelids, how they felt like they stuck together, eyes stinging. He squinted against the lights of the room. He stared at Tony. “Jeez, old man. You look like shit,” Harley groused. He pulled a smile, huffing a tight laugh.

It made the ache in his chest flare into a pang.

Harley winced. Tony frowned. “Careful, kiddo,” he admonished, knuckles white as he gripped his chair’s arm. “You’ve got some limited lung space.”

“Wha—” Harley looked down at his chest. A familiar—yet strange—blue light shone back at him, through his hospital gown. “What—what happened?”

“I’m sorry, Harley. I’m so sorry. But—you were in a car crash, shrapnel got—you weren’t—we can’t remove it. Yet.” Tony’s face steeled. “I’ll figure out a way to get it out. I promise. But—in the meantime—”

“I’ve got an arc reactor.”

Tony flinched. “I’m sorry.”

“Sorry? You saved my life! Oh, man, and I was trying to figure out an alternate power source for my—”

“What.”

Tony’s flat voice cut through Harley’s babbling. He froze. Blinked. “Uh … I … nothing?” He smiled, innocent as could be. Tony stared him down. “Okay, so, I wanna be a superhero. Y’know. Like you. So I—I started making my own suit. Inspired by yours, credit where credit is due, but with my own ideas, my own designs. Some stealth stuff, retro-reflecting panels, um, uh, a—okay, so the potato gun is just a prototype, but I’m working on some non-lethal projectiles—I wanna be like you.”

Tony paled.

“Please don’t puke on me. You look like you’re gonna be sick.” Harley glanced around. “This isn’t the local hospital.”

“No.”

“Where are we?”

“I brought you to the Tower. Couldn’t install the reactor anywhere else. And. You’re gonna stay here. With me and Pep. We’re bringing Macy and Abigail up too. Sometimes the other Avengers might be around, too.” His voice was still tight and flat. “Sorry.”

“Sorry? That—that’s so cool. I’m gonna—be a superhero.”

“… we’ll see. Get some sleep now. Bruce’ll make sure you get enough pain meds while you recover. I’ll make sure Macy’s here the next time you’re up.”

Harley frowned. “I was just asleep, though.”

“Trust me, you’ll want to sleep as much as you can.” Tony gave Harley a strained smile. “Helps with the pain.”

“But—”

“Sleep.”

Harley pouted, but ultimately listened.

* * *

Tony ran his hands through his hair. “The only way to remove the shrapnel is with extremis. It worked with me. But it might not have. Maybe I got lucky. Maybe he’ll respond o extremis worse, so much worse, what if we can’t cure it in time, what if it responds differently because he’s so young, or genetically different from me, what if—”

“Tony,” Pepper cut in. “Ignoring the implication that you were an experiment removing your arc reactor, isn’t this something you should talk to Harley about?”

“What if he wants to keep it? Or, worse, he chooses to remove it and it doesn’t work? What if something goes wrong? The cure worked for you and me, but what if—”

“Tony.”

He took a deep breath. “Okay. I’m okay. I just—”

“I know.” She drew him into her arms. He pressed his face against her neck. “He’s family.”

“Kids scare me so much, Pep. What if we—what if I—what if he gets hurt?”

“We’ll protect him.”

“What if we can’t?”

Pepper kissed Tony’s hair. “We will. There’s no other option. We’ll keep him safe.”

“… I want to run more tests with the extremis cure first. Can we … can we not tell him? Just yet? I—” Tony swallowed. “He can’t run into this blind.”

“We’ll keep him safe,” she promised.

“Yeah. We have to.”

“Exactly.” Pepper closed her eyes and held Tony close. “We keep our family safe. And we always will.”

“I’ll start running simulations for Harley’s specifications tomorrow,” he murmured. She nodded.

* * *

Tony closed his eyes, trying to erase the image before him, Steve with his shield raised.

The clamor of rubble rumbling jolted him into awareness. He opened his eyes to see a repulse beam throw Steve off his suit. “Friday,” Tony gasped. “Diagnostics.”

“All systems damaged. Motors failed. Manual release required.”

“Dammit.”

He watched, reaching for the switches that would remove his gauntlets, as Steve whirled on Harley. Even now, Harley was only using his non-lethal arsenal—and Tony could see every chink in his armor splitting, cracking, growing because of it, because Steve wasn’t holding back.

The metal fell off his hands, and Tony busied himself removing the separate pieces from his body, though the Siberian cold numbed his fingers with the frigid metal.

Metal rang against metal, alternated with low thuds, thunks, or groans, depending on how Harley’s projectiles landed. Tony tore, scrambled, at his armor, not daring to look up because what if those few moments were what made the difference, if he couldn’t get himself between Harley and the man Steve had become fast enough—Tony couldn’t think about it.

But he jolted when a metallic thud echoed in the bunker, his head jerking up to see Harley on his knees, Steve with his shield over his head—

Tony wrenched a piece of armor from his thigh and tried to scramble over, the lower half of his suit a dead weight, joints resistant without their motors running. “No, no, don’t, please, stop, Steve,” he begged, but he could see his pleas falling on deaf ears as Steve kicked Harley onto his back. The image was the same as just before Harley burst in, but Tony couldn’t save him, couldn’t get to him, not in time, dragging half the suit with him as he stumbled in the freezing cold.

Barnes, for what it was worth, stood back now, face screwed up in confusion and frustration, like he knew there was something he needed to remember, but couldn’t recall it now. Steve seemed not to notice that Barnes was done with the fight, that he was obviously safe now—

He brought the edge—the blade—of his shield down on Harley’s chest. Cracking echoed through the cold—of metal, of bone, of the arc reactor’s casing.

Tony screamed. Clumsily barreled forward, knocking Steve aside in an agonizing minute or two that stretched into eternity. If he had just been a little faster, he might have gotten to them in time.

Tony eased the helmet off Harley’s head. The metal, beaten, gave all too easily under his hands, not even coming off at the latch.

“To—Tony?”

Tony swallowed. “I’m here. I’m here.”

Steve stood back, staring at the two with wide eyes, like what he’d done had only just dawned on him. He dropped the shield with a clatter. Tony paid him no mind.

“I’m sorry.” Harley winced. “I just—I just wanted to protect you for once. Like—how you always protect me.”

“You’ve got nothing to be sorry for, kid. I promise. I _promise_. I should’ve—fuck, I should’ve done a better job protecting _you_.”

“Not—not your fault.”

Tony glanced at the flickering—dimming—light of the arc reactor. “Yeah, it is, kid. I’m sorry. I’m _so_ sorry—” The words caught in his constricting throat. He pressed his face in Harley’s hair.

Steve took a few stumbling steps back. Watched. Looked at Tony’s destroyed suit, Harley’s damaged reactor. His shield, on the ground. He grabbed Barnes by the arm, almost dragging his shell-shocked body out of the bunker.

Tony didn’t look up.

“Tony—Tony—you’re gonna—you’re gonna freeze here if you stay.”

“Kid.” Tony tightened his hold. “_Harley_. You—you’re not—”

“You gotta go.”

“I—”

“I’m dying.”

“Don’t say that.”

“The arc reactor’s almost out.”

“Don’t—”

“T’Challa probably got my message by now. I—I put it on a timer, just—just in case. If you—he’ll save you. Get you out.”

“I’m not leaving without you.”

The low him of Harley’s reactor stopped. The silence left behind in the dark of the bunker deafened Tony.

“Not long now … fuck.” Harley tried to smile. It looked like a grimace. “I—I didn’t think I’d be—fuck, I’m—I’m scared. Tony, I’m so fucking scared. I—I don’t—I don’t want to die. Not anymore. In Rose Hill—but then you brought me to New York, and I—I just—Tony, I don’t want to go, I don’t want to—” He choked on a sob.

Tony bit his lip until he tasted blood. Iron. Stark men are made of iron, but iron rusts. He held Harley to his chest. “I’m sorry, I’m so sorry,” he repeated.

“Tony …”

Harley fell slack in his arms. Tony held him and cried until T’Challa showed up.

Tony doesn’t remember getting into the jet, but he remembered clutching Harley’s freezing body until someone—stateside? or in Wakanda?—pried him from his hold.

He walked through a daze until he saw Pepper. His throat closed. His eyes stung.

She gathered him in her arms, his head buried in her neck.

“I lost the kid,” he said.

Pepper said nothing. She held him. They wept.

**Author's Note:**

> My tumblr: w-m-blake.tumblr.com


End file.
